Status of MPD experiment being discussed at VBLHEP

On 8 - 10 November, the 10th Collaboration Meeting of the MPD Experiment at the NICA Facility is taking place at the Laboratory of High Energy Physics. The event has brought together more than 150 participants to discuss the project in a hybrid format.

On the first day of the meeting, JINR Vice Director, Leader of the NICA Megascience Project Vladimir Kekelidze addressed the audience. "More than four years have passed since the creation of the collaboration. This strong cooperation of scientists from different countries is confidently moving forward," he said. In his speech, Vladimir Kekelidze focused on the milestones of the third commissioning cycle successfully completed in the beginning of this year. In addition, he spoke about tasks of the current session at the complex, which had started after the modernisation of one third of all Nuclotron systems. The overall readiness of the NICA project has reached 86% at the moment.

At present, the MPD collaboration includes more than 450 participants from 33 institutes of 10 countries. The number of publications is increasing. Thus, about 220 articles on physical research, equipment, and software of the experiment have already been published. The European Physical Journal A has issued the first scientific article authored by the collaboration. Acting Leader of the collaboration Victor Riabov (Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute) spoke about the status of the project. From September to December of this year, specialists are carrying out the cooling of the cryogenic infrastructure of the detector according to a temporary scheme. Specialists are working on power supply and installation control systems. In the summer, the correction coils of the solenoid were assembled and aligned. Moreover, last month, a team of the experiment installed the last three plates of the magnetic circuit, which completed the steel cover made of 28 steel plates, each weighing 18 tonnes. Specialists are working on the vacuum and cryogenic equipment of the solenoid. In the first half of 2023, specialists will cool down the magnet and measure the magnetic field. All components of the first stage of the MPD experiment are actively being developed. Speakers will present reports on each system.

Participants will discuss the software and computing infrastructure of the detector, as well as reconstruction of events in the experiment. Speakers of physical working groups will deliver progress reports. As part of the meeting programme, participants will be able to get acquainted with the status of the works during an excursion to the MPD Hall, which will take place on 9 November.

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